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Throughout the history of modern Africa, Africans have specified their desired future¿development, understood broadly¿and identified the major obstacles in achieving it. Debates about development have intensified in the post-colonial period, especially as African countries have replaced the leaders installed at independence. Amidst the general critique of the imposition of external values and rules, Africans have differed, sometimes sharply, on priorities, process, and programs. While for some the challenge is to catch up with development elsewhere, for others it is essential to leap ahead, to set the pace, to initiate a radical social, economic, and political transformation. To ground and extend the common approaches to studying development that emphasize economics and that rely largely on external commentators, we will explore African perspectives. Our major task will be a broad overview, sampling the analyses of Africa¿s intellectuals in several domains. Course participants will review, compare, and analyze major contributions, developing an understanding of contemporary intellectual currents.

AFRICAST 111:Education for All? The Global and Local in Public Policy Making in Africa (AFRICAST 211)

Policy making in Africa and the intersection of policy processes and their political and economic dimensions. The failure to implement agreements by international institutions, national governments, and nongovernmental organizations to promote education. Case studies of crowded and poorly equipped schools, overburdened and underprepared teachers, and underfunded education systems.

Is foreign aid a solution? or a problem? Should there be more aid, less aid, or none at all? How do foreign aid and local initiatives intersect? A clinic in Uganda that addresses AIDS as a family and community problem. Multiple strategies in Tanzania to increase girls' schooling. These are imaginative and innovative approaches to pressing and contested policy challenges. We will examine several contentious issues in contemporary Africa, exploring their roots and the intense conflicts they engender, with special attention to foreign aid and the aid relationship. As African communities and countries work to shape their future, what are the foreign roles and what are their consequences?

AFRICAST 131:Media and Conflict in Africa (AFRICAST 31)

Introduction to the variety of roles played by local and international media in covering conflict situations across the continent in the late 20t- and early 21st-centuries. The objective is to develop a theoretical and empirical understanding of the media as active participants in conflicts, rather than neutral witnesses. How the media in the African context have become tools for propaganda and for encouraging violence, as well as their role in promoting dialogue, peace and reconciliation between communities. These questions are relevant to the context of contemporary Africa where conflicts fueled by ethnic hatred or democratic aspirations have unfolded along with the development of media and communication technologies. Key concepts such as objectivity, impartiality, hate speech, peace journalism, citizen journalism, and cosmopolitanism, to analyze the role played by the media in case studies in Burundi, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda. A wide variety of material including: readings drawn from a fields such as media and journalism studies, political sciences, anthropology, and postcolonial theory; linguistic, visual, audio, video and multimedia material produced by news media; and films and documentaries.

This seminar is part of a broader program on Social Entrepreneurship at CDDRL in partnership with the Haas Center for Public Service. It will use practice to better inform theory. Working with three visiting social entrepreneurs from developing and developed country contexts students will use case studies of successful and failed social change strategies to explore relationships between social entrepreneurship, gender, democracy, development and justice. It interrogates current definitions of democracy and development and explores how they can become more inclusive of marginalized populations. This is a service learning class in which students will learn by working on projects that support the social entrepreneurs' efforts to promote social change. Students should register for either 3 OR 5 units only. Students enrolled in the full 5 units will have a service-learning component along with the course. Students enrolled for 3 units will not complete the service-learning component. Limited enrollment. Attendance at the first class is mandatory in order to participate in service learning.

How has Africa been dominantly represented in the media? How are these representations challenged, complexified and reproduced in the postcolonial context? What is the role of African media in these processes? This class is an introduction to the variety of roles played by the media in representing Africa, with a particular focus on the postcolonial context. The topic is particularly relevant to contemporary Africa as the emerging middle-class, economic and cultural globalization, and the uptake for communication technologies are shaping contested images of the continent. You will: develop a theoretical and empirical understanding of the media as instruments of domination but also of resistance; learn how to critically deconstruct media representations in everyday life; understand the challenges of intercultural communication in an unequal world. Key concepts such as: representation, stereotyping, cultural appropriation, afropessimism, afrocentrism, afro optimism, afropolitanism. Readings drawn from media and cultural studies, anthropology, postcolonial theory and literature. In class-analysis of photographs, news articles and broadcasts, PR campaigns, social media, films and documentaries.

AMSTUD 1B:Media, Culture, and Society (COMM 1B)

The institutions and practices of mass media, including television, film, radio, and digital media, and their role in shaping culture and social life. The media's shifting relationships to politics, commerce, and identity.

Last offered: Winter 2014
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 2:Introduction to American National Government and Politics (POLISCI 2)

American political institutions (the Presidency, Congress, and the Court) and political processes (the formation of political attitudes and voting) have for some time now been criticized as inadequate to the task of making modern public policy. Against the backdrop of American culture and political history we examine how public policy has been and is being made. We use theories from Political Science and Economics to assess the state of the American system and the policy making process. We use case studies and lectures to analyze contemporary issues including environmental policy, taxes and spending , gun control , economic growth and inequality and mobility. In some of these issue areas we use comparative data from other countries to see how the U.S. is doing relative to other countries. In addition to class room lecture and discussion, student groups are formed to analyze policy issues of relevance to them. (This course has merged with Political Science 123/PubPol 101)

Last offered: Winter 2015
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 25Q:The Origins of the Modern American City, 1865-1920 (HISTORY 55Q, URBANST 25Q)

Are we living in a new Gilded Age? To answer this question, we go back to the original Gilded Age, as well as its successor, the Progressive Era. How did urban Americans around the turn of the twentieth century deal with stark inequalities of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? And what can we learn from their struggles for our own time? Students use primary and secondary sources in digital and print formats. Possible field trip to San Francisco.

Last offered: Winter 2016
| UG Reqs: WAY-ED, WAY-SI

AMSTUD 55N:Social Movements through Song in Modern America (FEMGEN 55N, HISTORY 55N)

This discussion class will explore a series of social movements in modern America through the songs produced to support efforts to achieve labor unions, civil rights and racial justice, peace, and women's rights. For each class we will read short historical texts to provide contexts for the movements and then concentrate on the role of music within them. We will listening to and discuss several core songs for each topic. Biographical and autobiographical readings on a key set of musicians (including Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Malvina Reynolds, and Bernice Johnson Reagon) will provide personal accounts of the relationship of songs to social movement . The music we include in class will range from ballads to anthems, from oral traditions to the work of singer-songwriters.